


take a chance, take you higher

by jjokkiri



Category: Produce 101 (TV), X1 (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Cheating, Feelings, Friends With Benefits, Light Angst, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love, and hangyul talks to him about his feelings, basically this is what it is, wooseok is married to someone he doesn't love, wooseok's unnamed spouse is a dick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:21:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22766176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjokkiri/pseuds/jjokkiri
Summary: They were thirty-two floors above ground-level and, somehow, being with Wooseok still took him higher.But everything that soars will someday fall.
Relationships: Kim Wooseok | Wooshin/Lee Hangyul
Comments: 5
Kudos: 39





	take a chance, take you higher

“So then, what about the fact that I’m in love with you?”

The question almost seemed to hang heavily between them, unrelenting in weight. Whatever tension that was lingering in the air only seemed to thicken with the weight of the question. Wooseok built the tension with his offhanded remark that he was going to be moving away from Seoul, and Hangyul continued constructing the disaster that Wooseok started.

Unable to look directly at Wooseok, Hangyul’s gaze remained fixed on the bay-length windows, staring out at the city skyline; an exquisite display of lights just past Wooseok’s frame. He sat at the edge of the bed with his elbows rested on his knees and a thin blanket draped over his lap for decency sake.

He avoided Wooseok’s eyes. He kept his focus on the window, staring out at the view.

It was a familiar twinkling of familiar lights. The cityscape was a familiar view for both of them. For Wooseok, it was a daily sight; it was the last thing he saw on nights where he often fell asleep alone—no one else to hold him in his bed. Wooseok’s penthouse suite overlooked Seoul.

For Hangyul, it was all too familiar because he came here often, too often.

They were thirty-two floors above ground-level and, somehow, being with Wooseok still took him higher.

The thick tension broke when Wooseok spoke. Wooseok turned to look at Hangyul, the thin sheet wrapped around his small frame, hanging off of his shoulders and nearly swallowing him whole.

He tilted his head. There was something unreadable in his eyes.

His voice still sounding as soft as ever, he said, “What _about_ the fact that you’re in love with me?”

There was a beat of silence.

Hangyul should have expected that for an answer.

Over the months that they had known one another, over the months leading up to the questionable spiral of their relationship into what it was, Hangyul never got to know what it felt like to have a direct answer from Wooseok. From Wooseok, it was always sly smiles and mischievous glints before he was given an open response before he was pushed back against Wooseok’s bed and instructed to just forget about everything around them for a night.

And as much as Hangyul liked to hear Wooseok’s moaning for him, he preferred to hear the older man’s voice in a conversation. He preferred to hear Wooseok tell him about his day, about the little things that bothered him, about the things that led up to the moment that Wooseok pushed Hangyul’s number on speed dial and pleaded to see him.

He didn’t get it often. He didn’t get to hear Wooseok’s voice as much as he wanted to. Where Wooseok always seemed to get what he wanted because Hangyul couldn’t refuse him, Hangyul didn’t get nearly as lucky when it came to asking Wooseok for a part of his heart. Wooseok built his boundaries up around himself like a cryptic puzzle and Hangyul still found himself entirely enraptured by the older man’s mysteriousness—found himself unable to tear his focus away from trying to solve Wooseok.

But, there was something so cruel about the fact that Wooseok still refused to give him a direct answer when everything was slowly slipping out of their hands. Hangyul couldn’t understand how Wooseok could look him in the eye and tell him that he was leaving the country in a few weeks, permanently, and expect Hangyul to simply accept it. He couldn’t.

“I asked you first.”

Hangyul absently toyed with the edge of the satin sheets. Wooseok remained quiet.

Hangyul fell back against the bed and exhaled a heavy breath of air. He should be used to this, but the disappointment never seemed to subside. It always felt the same; a terrible weight that pulled him down because he was always too hopeful when he asked. And he knew better than to be hopeful when all that hopefulness could bring him was sheer disappointment.

Hangyul closed his eyes, “… you still don’t care, do you?”

Though he knew that Hangyul couldn’t see him, Wooseok shrugged his shoulders.

“Should I care? You keep coming back knowing that I don’t do feelings, Hangyul,” he replied. Something about the tone of his voice felt detached, insincere. Something deep inside of Hangyul wanted to latch onto that vulnerability and pry at it until he got the truth out of Wooseok. Wooseok looked at him, “Is that my fault or is it yours?”

He turned back to the window. His fingertips pressed against the glass of the window and he leaned his forehead against it. Wooseok exhaled a breath of air—weighted heavier than the exhaustion that Hangyul felt (and Hangyul couldn’t help but think that he should be the one who sounded so tired).

“What do you want me to do about the fact that you’re in love with me?”

“How long are you going to keep that up, hyung?”

Wooseok frowned, “What are you talking about? What do you want me to do?”

Hangyul fixed Wooseok with a quiet look, wordless.

And for a moment, the tension in the air felt unbearable; suffocating. For a moment, all Hangyul wanted to do was run away and hide. But with his heart thrown out in the open, he couldn’t abandon it.

“Say something,” Hangyul answered, simply. “That’s all I want.”

“And what do you want me to say?” Wooseok asked.

Hangyul felt his presence moving closer to him before he felt the dip in the bed. Wooseok seated himself at the edge of the bed, next to Hangyul’s sprawled figure. Hangyul turned his head and cracked open an eye to look at Wooseok, silently. The older man’s eyes were focused at his own hands, rested in his lap. He paid no mind to Hangyul’s eyes fixed on him.

“I want you to tell me how you feel,” he replied, softly. “I don’t want you to say something because you know that I want to hear it. I want to know how you feel about me being in love with you while you, completely aware of the fact that I would do anything for you, continue to do nothing about it.”

“What do you _want_ me to do about it, Hangyul?” Wooseok fixed him with a strange look.

There was silence. And Hangyul broke it.

“It’s not that you don’t do feelings,” Hangyul murmured. Wooseok laughed at that, a confused sound.

“What are you talking about? I told you from the beginning that I don’t do feelings,” he reminded him with a frown on his lips. From where Hangyul was lying down on the bed, the way that Wooseok pulled his knees up to his chest with the sheets still wrapped around his body made him look small; fragile.

Hangyul tore his eyes away. He shifted, folding his hands behind his head. He stared up at the ceiling.

“Of course,” he replied, “you don’t do feelings. It’s probably what you said to everyone else before me, too. And they just left it like that.” He exhaled his words as a quiet murmur, “It’s such a likely story for someone who is married to someone they don’t love, someone who just parades them around like a pretty trophy, someone who leaves them to sleep alone in the middle of the night.”

Wooseok’s gaze hardened when he turned to look at Hangyul but he didn’t say a word.

“You think that I don’t know that you cry yourself to sleep every night that you’re all alone here,” Hangyul whispered. He didn’t know where the sudden courage came from but he suddenly felt the need to spill everything that was on his mind. “You think that no one pays attention to you because you’re always left alone in the middle of the night. You think that you’re alone in this world and there’s nothing you can do about it, so you find boys to sleep around with, hoping that you can trash them when you’re bored of them. You don’t expect them to be attentive and you don’t expect them to stick around.”

Wooseok’s fingers gripped tightly into the sheet wrapped around him and even in the darkness of the room, Hangyul could see the way that his knuckles turned white with the grip. Wooseok’s eyes flickered up to meet with Hangyul’s for a brief moment. He looked away as quickly as their eyes met.

“Why are you acting as if you know me?”

Something in Wooseok’s voice almost seemed to shake, he almost sounded _afraid_.

And he had already said too much. There wasn’t use in trying to turn back, now.

Hangyul sighed, “Hyung, I know you. I _do_ know you.”

He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. Hangyul turned his head to look at Wooseok, quietly studying the way Wooseok’s expression reflecting a myriad of thoughts.

“… You always think that you have your walls built up so high but you don’t realize that you let your guard down when you’re around me. You call me when you need someone to hold you in the middle of the night when you need someone to listen to all the little things that bother you.” Hangyul reached for Wooseok’s hand, his fingers gently brushing over the back of Wooseok’s hand. He swallowed, “I’m not some stupid kid who falls in love with the first boy I sleep with. You know that, don’t you?”

Wooseok remained still when Hangyul’s hand reached for his. He stared down at where their hands touched. And all Hangyul could hear in the tense room was the sound of Wooseok’s breathing.

“Just tell me why it’s me that you call when you need someone to comfort you,” Hangyul whispered. “I’m not asking you to tell me that you love me. Just tell me why you choose to call me out of everyone else that you could easily bed.”

Wooseok closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He looked away.

“… You’re the only one who knows what to do to calm me down,” he replied. His voice was quiet, almost as if he were admitting a secret he didn’t want the world to know. “You’re the only person who has dealt with me enough to know, you know me better than the people I’m supposed to call my _‘friends’_ in this circle of rich trophies. You’re the only one who sticks around. I know you’ll do anything for me so I call you. You’ll come to me no matter what hour of the night it is.” He shook his head, disbelieving of the words leaving his own mouth, “You treat me like gold and maybe, I like that a little bit too much.”

Wooseok glanced at him, “Isn’t that selfish of me? Isn’t that so horrible of me? And you still choose to stick around with me. I’m using you to fill a void that someone else can’t give me and you choose to keep staying by my side. You tell _me_ what I’m supposed to do about the fact that you’re in love with me.”

“The ball is in your court, hyung,” Hangyul whispered. His fingers caught air when they went to lace with Wooseok’s fingers. He closed his fingers around nothing and exhaled, quietly, “You already know that I love you. You can do whatever you want.”

“What do you want me to do, Hangyul? I can’t do anything,” Wooseok laughed, bitterly. Wooseok looked up at the ceiling as if trying to hold back the impending surge of tears. He dabbed his fingers under his eyes with another hollow laugh, “I’m a married man who is fooling around with someone who treats me a million times better than he could ever. What am I supposed to do? Maybe, it would be different if he knew that I was cheating on him with you.”

Hangyul laughed, a hollow sound. He sat up in Wooseok’s bed, the satin sheets falling off of his body.

“Are you going to leave me here?” he asked, “Are you going to leave Seoul and never look back?”

Wooseok remained quiet.

Hangyul sighed. _Disappointment. Typical of them._

“You’re better than that,” Hangyul whispered, “you’re stronger than that.”

Wooseok looked at him, confused.

Hangyul’s lips tugged into a wry smile and he shrugged his shoulders, “I know you, hyung. I know you’re stronger than that.”

He pushed himself off of the bed and grabbed his shirt from off of the floor. He slipped it over his head and turned to look at Wooseok as he looped his belt back around his jeans.

“Are you leaving?” Wooseok asked.

“You are,” Hangyul replied. He looked over his shoulder at Wooseok, “You’re leaving in a couple of nights. What’s the point in keeping it up if you’re going to leave me in a few nights, anyway? Even if you fall asleep in my arms tonight, you won’t be doing it when you’re far away from Seoul.”

“Hangyul…”

Halfway through pulling his jacket over his shoulders, Hangyul sighed.

He bit down on his lower lip, “If you want to keep living a life where you’re not yourself, you’re free to do it. I’ll get over my pathetic feelings for you someday.”

Wooseok frowned at him, “Hangyul, don’t say that…”

“What do you want me to say? Am I wrong?” Wooseok couldn’t answer him and that was all that he needed. He shrugged his shoulders, “I know enough about unrequited love to get over it by myself.”

“So, that’s it?” Wooseok’s voice was so quiet. Hangyul felt his heart twinge. “We’re not going to see one another again after you leave this apartment? This is it?”

The heavy silence seemed to waver.

Hangyul abandoned his caution.

He turned to look at the man on the bed.

“It doesn’t have to be. You have my number if you ever want to change your mind,” Hangyul murmured.

Wooseok stared after him, seemingly desperate to say something his pretty lips couldn’t utter.

Hangyul shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged his shoulders, hoping that his sincerity could be masked by the feigned nonchalance in his stance.

He fixed his tired eyes on Wooseok, “I can’t force you to do what you don’t want to do and I certainly can’t ask you to leave behind the world that you know, especially because I can’t offer you anything—I can’t offer you the money that you have, I can only treat you the way you deserve to be treated. And that might not mean anything to you at all, but… there’s always a place for you next to me, okay?”

And then, he was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/yuseokki) / [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jjokkiri) ♡


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